RFC: The ENS Contributor Gateway — A Streamlined Funding Framework for New Contributors
Abstract
This proposal addresses a critical inefficiency in the current contribution model of the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) DAO, which presents a significant barrier to entry for new talent. The existing system heavily relies on prospective contributors investing substantial, uncompensated time to build reputation and social capital, or undertaking work speculatively with the hope of receiving retroactive compensation. This high-friction, reputation-gated framework inadvertently limits the DAO’s talent pool, stifles permissionless innovation, and reduces operational agility. Not everyone is prepared to work for free, and not only that but very few people even have the means to contribute their time without compensation. To resolve this, this proposal introduces the “ENS Contributor Gateway” a structured, three-tiered funding framework designed to provide clear, accessible, and predictable pathways for new and aspiring contributors. The Gateway consists of a Bounty system for small, well-defined tasks and a Project Grants program for more substantial initiatives and Core Contributor Streams representing full-time employment by the DAO. First two offer compensation assurance prior to the commencement of work or in case of Core Contributor Stream assured stable stream of income for prolonged period of time. The intended outcome is to unlock a wider and more diverse pool of talent, accelerate ecosystem development, and materially enhance the decentralization and resilience of contributions to the ENS DAO.
Motivation
The Core Problem: A High Barrier to Meaningful Contribution
The long-term success of the ENS DAO, as with any organization, is contingent upon its ability to attract, onboard, and retain a diverse and skilled pool of contributors. However, the current de facto pathway to becoming a compensated contributor is fraught with friction, uncertainty, and significant implicit costs that disproportionately affect individuals without pre-existing financial security or extensive social capital within the ecosystem. Aspiring contributors face a daunting “reputation grind,” a period that can extend for months or even a year, during which they must actively participate in forums, join working group calls, and build relationships with key community members—all without any guarantee of compensation. This process, while effective at building trust, creates an environment where only those with the privilege to work for free can realistically participate.
This structural barrier has been exacerbated by the evolution of the DAO’s funding mechanisms. The closure of previous low-barrier initiatives, such as the Small Grants and Builders Grants among others, has removed a critical “proving ground” where new talent could demonstrate their skills on a smaller scale and build a verifiable track record. The absence of such entry-level opportunities forces potential contributors into an all-or-nothing scenario: either commit to the long-term, unpaid process of building reputation or abandon participation entirely. The participation of talent has been on decline as highlighted by this analysis here - A small infographic on the topic of a small talent pool.
Furthermore, the burden of the current system extends to established DAO participants. Delegates, who are often unpaid volunteers, are tasked with vetting an increasing number of complex projects and funding requests without a standardized framework. This has led to acknowledged feelings of being overwhelmed and experiencing burnout, making it difficult to give each proposal the rigorous evaluation it deserves. I already pointed in the past that we need proper framework for delegate incentivization, we can discuss if such incentivization can be incorporated into this framework, or if it should be a matter of different proposal. For example @lefterisjp pointed out that it’s difficult to work as a volunteer delegate. @clowes.eth in this post here also shared similar thoughts but under a slightly different angle - https://discuss.ens.domains/t/toward-accountable-and-strategic-funding-in-ens/20732. An unstructured and inefficient contributor participation is therefore not only a barrier for newcomers but also an unsustainable operational strain on the DAO’s existing governance body.
Moving Beyond Retroactive Funding
The ENS DAO’s current funding philosophy, particularly within ENS Ecosystem Working Group, is explicitly retroactive. Grants are awarded based on the past value a project has created for the ecosystem, which is demonstrated through historical usage or novel use cases. This model is invaluable for rewarding proven success and ensuring that DAO funds are allocated to projects with demonstrated impact. Examples like the retroactive grants awarded to Pinnable, ENS Data, and ETH.LIMO showcase the DAO’s commitment to supporting foundational infrastructure that has already proven its worth.
However, an over-reliance on retroactive funding creates a system that is inherently exclusionary. It presupposes that contributors have the resources—time, capital, and expertise—to build and launch a successful project before seeking any financial support. This model systematically filters out a vast and diverse talent pool: independent developers, researchers from non-crypto backgrounds, community organizers in emerging markets, and anyone who cannot afford the financial risk of speculative, unpaid labor. While retroactive compensation should remain a tool in the DAO’s arsenal, it cannot be the primary mechanism for sourcing new innovation. To foster a truly permissionless and dynamic ecosystem, the DAO must adopt proactive funding models that empower builders based on the merit and potential of their ideas, not just their ability to self-fund. This proposal seeks to create that proactive pathway, complementing the existing retroactive model to create a more balanced and inclusive funding strategy. One of the limitations of this approach is that it inevitably creates a certain deadweight of inefficient funding, whereby contributors would not deliver on their ideas. There was a heated debate recently within the Arbitrum ecosystem, whether the current system of delegate incentivization is truly efficient given that some delegates were able to game the system simply by ticking all the boxes. From what I understood the consensus in the community on the matter was that firstly that it is better to have a slightly inefficient system and retain genuinely useful delegates, and secondly that this issue boils down to administration of the program. Assuming that administrators are efficient at kicking out unproductive contributors, deadweight loss can be minimal or even set to zero.
The Centralization Risk
The challenges outlined above are not merely operational problems - they all combine together into a significant, strategic risk to the DAO’s long-term decentralization and growth. The current high-trust, reputation-based system, by its very nature, creates a powerful centralizing force.
The logic is as follows:
1. Trust as a Bottleneck: Securing DAO funding requires a high degree of trust, which, under the current model, is primarily established through prolonged, visible, and uncompensated community engagement. With all my respect to @estmcmxci and @danch.quixote, and not to devalue their contributions – on the contrary I think their efforts are quite valuable. Still, I would like to highlight that they are prime examples of people who somehow managed to fit through that bottleneck, something that could’ve been avoided entirely if we had a proper system in place.
2. Emergence of an Entrenched Group: Consequently, only a small cohort of individuals and teams can successfully navigate this arduous process. These are typically entities that have already cleared the reputation hurdle, such as the established teams funded through the Service Provider Program (SPP). I acknowledge that SPP is a bit of a different breed / type of participants than the type of actors which fall into scope of this proposal. All SPPs are immensely valuable and this proposal is not to devalue their contribution – the aim here is through constructive community discussion to complement existing “participation mechanisms” to make ENS DAO even more efficient. I don’t mean to build a competing SPP system here, think of it like this – SPPs are pillars of community, but we need an active inflow of smaller, not established actors to supplement growth of DAO. Coincidentally as an example this inflow could be the source of that “technical team” @clowes.eth is talking about in his post.
3. Dependency and Concentration: This dynamic creates a dependency where the DAO relies on a limited and relatively static group of known actors for the majority of its critical development and ecosystem work. While these providers are valuable, an over-reliance on them concentrates both influence and execution capabilities within a small circle. This applies both to the institute of stewardship and SPPs. @netto.eth already surfaced the idea that rotation of Stewards should be enforced, but then again, his proposal is a “more narrow instance of this proposal”, which I’m hoping would be tackled in turn once we solve the issue of attracting more broad talent. [Temp Check] Amendments to Working Group Rules
4. De Facto Centralization: This concentration constitutes a form of de facto centralization. It runs counter to the core principles of a resilient, decentralized autonomous organization by stifling permissionless innovation and making the ecosystem fragile. If the DAO’s ability to innovate and execute is primarily limited to those who have already “made it,” it ceases to be a truly open and dynamic ecosystem.
Therefore, this proposal is not simply a matter of improving operational efficiency or being more “fair” to newcomers. It is a necessary and strategic intervention designed to mitigate a creeping centralization risk. By creating a transparent, accessible, and merit-based on-ramp for new contributors, the ENS Contributor Gateway will actively decentralize the pool of talent the DAO can draw from, thereby enhancing its long-term resilience, adaptability, and alignment with its foundational principles.
Specification
To address the identified challenges, this proposal specifies the creation of the “ENS Contributor Gateway” a comprehensive, three-tiered framework designed to systematically onboard and fund new contributors. This system will be governed by a dedicated cross-functional Grants Council, ensuring both accountability and alignment with the DAO’s broader strategic objectives.
The Contributor Gateway Framework
The Gateway is designed with multiple on-ramps to cater to different scales of contribution and levels of contributor experience. It separates small, discrete tasks from larger, more complex projects, allowing the DAO to apply the appropriate level of oversight and funding to each.
- Tier 1: Bounties: A low-friction entry point for completing well-defined tasks, building a reputation through tangible work, and receiving prompt compensation.
- Tier 2: Project Grants: A formal process for proposing, funding, and executing more substantial projects that require significant time and resources.
- Tier 3: Core Contributor Streams: The Path to Full-Time Contribution.
This tiered structure is deliberately designed to create a contributor lifecycle. An individual can begin by completing a few bounties, building a verifiable history of successful contributions. This track record can then be used to strengthen a future application for a larger project grant, creating a clear ladder of progression from initial engagement to significant impact. We can introduce elements of gamification into this process, by awarding actors who successfully completed tasks NFTs of respective level. That way they not only can track the progress, but showcase to a broader community their involvement in ENS DAO. Such NFTs would effectively serve as quality control, and potentially allow contributors seeking employment elsewhere across the ecosystem to prove their “usefulness”, thus making participation in the ENS DAO affairs more attractive. Those NFT badges will serve as verifiable credentials.
Tier 1: Bounties — The Entry Point
Purpose: The primary goal of the Bounty system is to lower the barrier to a contributor’s first compensated interaction with the ENS DAO. It replaces the need for an extended period of unpaid social engagement with a direct, work-for-pay mechanism. This serves as an efficient proving ground, allowing individuals to demonstrate their skills and reliability on small-stakes tasks. Tasks can be originated both from ENS DAO itself as well as from contributors identifying certain DAO needs which they can cover.
Task Types: Bounties will be created for specific, well-scoped tasks that can be completed by an individual or small team in a relatively short timeframe. Examples include:
- Technical: Fixing issues in ENS-related GitHub repositories.
- Content & Documentation: Writing a technical guide for a new feature, translating existing documentation into a new language, creating a video tutorial, or designing infographics for social media.
- Community & Marketing: Compiling a weekly summary of governance discussions, moderating a specific Discord channel for a set period, or conducting user research on a particular feature.
- Analysis: Performing a small-scale analysis of on-chain data or summarizing the key takeaways from a competitor’s recent update.
Platform Integration: To manage the bounty process efficiently and transparently, this proposal recommends a pilot integration with a dedicated DAO task management platform. Ad-hoc management via forum threads or community calls is inefficient and difficult to track. Platforms like Dework and CharmVerse are purpose-built for this use case, offering features such as wallet-based authentication, task boards with clear statuses (Open, In Progress, In Review, Done), and integration with payment streams. I personally don’t have experience with either, and we need to investigate mechanisms which could be a good fit for the task. I provided those merely as illustrations, because they are just the obvious candidates which come up in search. The Grants Council (specified below) will be tasked with evaluating and selecting the most suitable platform for a pilot program.
Tier 2: Project Grants — The Path to Impact
Purpose: The Project Grants program is the core of this proposal, designed to directly solve the problem of enabling contributors to secure funding for significant work before they begin. It provides a formal, transparent, and predictable process for individuals and teams to propose and execute projects that align with the DAO’s strategic goals.
Project Types: This tier is intended for more complex, long-term initiatives that cannot be broken down into simple bounties. Examples include:
- Ecosystem Tooling: Development of a new analytics dashboard, a browser extension for interacting with ENS, or a utility for managing subdomains.
- Research & Analysis: A comprehensive report on the competitive landscape of decentralized identity, an economic analysis of a proposed fee change, or a deep dive into user behavior patterns.
- Community & Education: Launching and managing a regional ENS ambassador program, creating a comprehensive educational course for developers, or organizing a series of online workshops.
- Governance & Operations: Building a new tool to improve delegate communication or developing a framework for DAO-to-DAO collaborations.
The Project Grant Lifecycle
To ensure fairness, transparency, and accountability, all project grants will follow a standardized, multi-stage lifecycle.
1. Application Submission: Prospective grantees will complete a standardized application form. This form, to be finalized by the Grants Council and provided as a template, will require clear and detailed information on several key areas, drawing inspiration from the proposal structures from around the ecosystem. Required sections will include:
- Simple Summary: A concise, one-sentence description of the project and the funding amount requested.
- Motivation: A clear explanation of the problem the project solves and why it is important for the ENS ecosystem.
- Specification & Scope of Work: A detailed breakdown of the project’s deliverables, features, and technical approach.
- Team Background: Information on the applicant(s), their relevant experience, and links to prior work.
- Timeline & Milestones: A realistic project timeline with clearly defined, measurable milestones.
- Budget: A detailed breakdown of how the requested funds will be allocated.
2. Review by Grants Council: Applications will be reviewed by the Grants Council in defined cycles or “seasons.” This cyclical model creates predictability for applicants and allows the review team to process applications in focused batches. The Council will evaluate proposals against a public optics, assessing factors like strategic alignment, technical feasibility, team capability, and potential impact.
3. Community Feedback: Applications that pass the initial Council review will be posted on the ENS governance forum for a fixed period (e.g., 7 days) for public comment. This step ensures transparency and allows the broader community and delegates to provide feedback, ask questions, and raise concerns before a final decision is made.
4. Funding Agreement & Milestones: Successful applicants will receive a formal grant agreement. This agreement will codify the scope of work, reporting requirements, and a milestone-based payment schedule. Funds will be disbursed as milestones are verifiably met and approved by the Council. This milestone-based approach is a critical accountability mechanism to ensure progress and mitigate risk.
5. Completion & Showcase: Upon final milestone completion, grantees will be required to publish their work under an open-source license (e.g., MIT License, a requirement also used in the ENS SPP) and present their project to the community. This could take the form of a forum post, a recorded demo, or a presentation on a community call. This final step ensures that the value created is effectively shared and integrated into the ecosystem.
Tier 3: Core Contributor Streams — The Path to Full-Time Contribution
Purpose: The ultimate goal of the Contributor Gateway is not just to attract new talent, but to retain it. Tier 3 creates a clear and predictable pathway for proven, high-impact contributors to transition from project-based work to stable, long-term roles within the DAO. This provides contributors with a level of job security and predictable income, while ensuring the DAO has dedicated individuals managing critical, ongoing functions that are not well-suited to the grant-based model of Tier 2. This addresses the need for dedicated leadership and avoids contributor burnout from financial uncertainty.
Role Types: Tier 3 is designed for roles that require consistent, long-term commitment rather than discrete, project-based deliverables. These are not one-off projects but ongoing responsibilities essential to the DAO’s health and growth. Examples include:
- Governance Facilitator: A full-time role dedicated to managing the proposal lifecycle, summarizing discussions for delegates, and improving governance processes.
- Community & Education Lead: Responsible for managing the DAO’s official communication channels, developing educational materials, and running community engagement programs.
- DAO Operations Manager: A role focused on coordinating between working groups, managing DAO-wide tooling, and ensuring the smooth execution of day-to-day operational tasks.
The Path to Tier 3: Transitioning to a Core Contributor Stream is the final stage of the contributor lifecycle and is reserved for individuals who have demonstrated exceptional value and commitment to the DAO. The process is designed to be meritocratic and transparent.
1. Eligibility & Nomination: A contributor becomes eligible for consideration after successfully delivering on multiple Tier 1/ 2 Project Grants, thereby building a significant and verifiable track record of impact. A nomination for a Core Contributor role can be initiated either by the Grants Council identifying a need for a full-time position or by the contributor themselves drafting a detailed role proposal.
2. Role Proposal & Approval: The proposal for a Tier 3 role is more rigorous than a project grant. It must be structured as a formal Request for Proposal (RFP), a well-established mechanism within the ENS DAO. The proposal must clearly define:
- The ongoing responsibilities and scope of the role.
- A set of clear Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for measuring success.
- The strategic value of the role to the DAO.
- The requested compensation package. This proposal would be reviewed by the Grants Council and then posted for community feedback before being advanced to a formal DAO-wide social vote for approval.
3. Compensation & Agreement: To provide genuine job security, compensation for Core Contributors will be structured as a continuous stream, rather than milestone-based payments. This aligns with best practices for creating predictable income for full-time contributors. The compensation package will be a hybrid model:
- Base Salary: A competitive monthly salary paid in stablecoins to cover living expenses and provide financial stability.
- Vested Tokens: A significant portion of compensation paid in vested $ENS tokens over the term of the agreement. This aligns long-term incentives and ensures Core Contributors are owners and stakeholders in the DAO’s success.
Upon approval, the contributor will enter into a formal DAO Contributor Agreement to clarify the terms of the engagement, deliverables, and potentially legal relationship with the DAO.
4. Term & Accountability: Core Contributor roles are not permanent positions but are offered for fixed, renewable terms (e.g., 12 months), similar to the DAO’s existing governance terms. Accountability is paramount. Core Contributors will be required to provide quarterly reports to the governance forum, detailing their progress against their stated KPIs. This reporting structure mirrors the successful accountability framework of the ENS Service Provider Program. The DAO, through a governance vote, retains the right to terminate a contributor’s stream if performance consistently fails to meet the agreed-upon expectations.
I recognize that Tier 3 heavily intersects with the current Stewardships institute. The proposal is looking to complement and enhance current governance. With this program if we can raise prospective competent and efficient Steward candidates internally that will be a huge win.
Governance and Oversight: The Grants Council
The effective operation of the Contributor Gateway hinges on a dedicated and accountable oversight body. This proposal specifies the formation of a Grants Council to fulfill this role.
Mandate: The Grants Council will serve as the designated “RFP Manager” for the Contributor Gateway program. Its core responsibilities will be to:
- Define and manage the application and review process.
- Evaluate and select bounty tasks and project grant recipients.
- Oversee the disbursement of funds based on milestone completion.
- Report on the program’s performance and budget utilization to the DAO.
Composition: To ensure broad alignment, prevent capture, and leverage existing expertise, the Grants Council will be a dedicated subgroup composed of seven members:
- One steward (or a nominated representative) from each of the three core Working Groups: Meta-Governance, ENS Ecosystem, and Public Goods voted into position via snapshot to ensure community approval.
- Four community members elected by the DAO for a single term, selected based on demonstrated expertise in relevant domains such as technical development, product management, ecosystem growth, or financial analysis.
- The 50/50 composition is not arbitrary, with 3 Stewards and 4 community members we can achieve balanced representation, so that community voice will have equal weight.
This specific composition is a deliberate choice. The ENS DAO’s decision making power and budgets are currently distributed among its Working Groups. Creating a new, fully independent funding body is like creating a competing “doubling function”, likely to encounter operational friction with the established WGs. By structuring the Grants Council as a cross-functional body composed of representatives from these very WGs, the proposal reframes the Contributor Gateway as a tightly knitted part of existing DAO fabric. It is not a replacement for WG funding streams, but rather a specialized service provider for them and for the DAO at large. The WGs can use the Gateway as a highly efficient mechanism to source and fund external talent to achieve their own strategic objectives, transforming a potential friction into a collaborative partnership. This structure fosters buy-in from the DAO’s existing decision making centers and ensures that funded projects are aligned with core priorities.
Indicative implementation roadmap
The implementation of the ENS Contributor Gateway will be conducted in a phased and transparent manner, adhering to the established governance processes of the ENS DAO. This approach ensures community buy-in at each critical stage and allows for iterative refinement based on practical experience.
Phase 1: Social Proposal Approval & Council Formation (Weeks 1-4)
1. Social Proposal Vote: Once discussed and finalized this proposal will be put to a vote on Snapshot. A successful vote will signal the DAO’s formal approval of the Contributor Gateway concept and its governance structure.
2. Council Formation: Immediately following the passage of this social proposal, the Meta-Governance Working Group will be requested to facilitate the formation of the inaugural Grants Council.
- Snapshot voted stewards of the Meta-Governance, ENS Ecosystem, and Public Goods working groups will each serve as representative on the Council.
- A formal nomination and election process will be conducted on the governance forum to select the four community members for the remaining seats. This process will be open to all community members, with candidates encouraged to outline their qualifications and vision for the role.
Phase 2: Framework Finalization & Pilot Program (Weeks 5-12)
1. Operational Framework Development: The newly formed Grants Council will convene to finalize all necessary operational documents. This will include among other deliverables:
- The official Project Grant application template.
- A detailed, public optics for evaluating applications.
- Standardized templates for milestone reporting. As can be seen from the SPP program, standardizing milestones can be quite a difficult task, so such a template will serve as rough guidance for program participants, but will not be set in stone.
- A formal charter outlining the Council’s operating procedures, meeting schedule, and decision-making process.
2. Pilot Budget Request: The Council will draft and submit a collective Executable Proposal to the DAO to secure a modest, dedicated budget for a pilot program. Following the standard funding request process, this would first be presented as a social proposal before moving to an on-chain vote. A suggested pilot budget is 50 ETH [tbd] and 100,000 USDC [tbd], sufficient to fund a limited number of bounties and 3-5 small-to-medium sized project grants.
3. Pilot Program Launch: Upon successful funding, the Council will announce and launch the first pilot grants round. This round will be explicitly communicated as a trial to test and refine the processes in a live environment. The Council will solicit applications and manage the entire lifecycle for a small cohort of projects.
Phase 3: Full Rollout & Platform Integration
1. Process Refinement: Based on the learnings and feedback from the pilot program, the Grants Council will make any necessary adjustments to the application, review, and reporting processes.
2. Full Program Launch: The Contributor Gateway will be officially opened for ongoing applications, with the Council conducting regular consultations for review of applications in cycles (e.g., quarterly or bi-monthly).
3. Bounty Platform Integration: The Council will complete its evaluation of bounty platforms (e.g., Dework, CharmVerse) and execute the integration of the selected tool to manage the program.
Phase 4 (End of Term): Formal Review & Iteration
1. Performance Report: At the conclusion of its first full term of operation, the Grants Council will publish a comprehensive report for the community. This report will analyze the program’s performance against the success criteria defined below.
2. Community Review and Budget Renewal: The report will include recommendations for iterating and improving the program. It will serve as the primary justification for a subsequent budget request for the next term, allowing the DAO to make a data-driven decision on the program’s continuation and funding level.
Success Criteria
To ensure the Contributor Gateway is accountable to the DAO and is achieving its stated objectives, its performance will be measured against a set of clear, public, and measurable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). The Grants Council will be responsible for tracking these metrics and reporting on them to the community regularly.
Quantitative Metrics
These metrics will provide an objective measure of the program’s reach, efficiency, and output.
- New Contributor Growth: The number of unique, first-time contributors who receive funding through either a bounty or a project grant.
- Target: Achieve a 50% [tbd, just an example] increase in the number of unique funded contributors (compared to a baseline established from previous ad-hoc funding) within the first full year of operation.
- Program Throughput:
- The total number of bounty tasks successfully completed and compensated per month.
- The total number of project grants successfully completed and delivered per term.
- Operational Efficiency: The average time from the close of an application cycle to the final funding decision for Project Grants.
- Target: Achieve an average decision time of less than 30 days [tbd].
- Value Delivered: The total value (in ETH and USDC) of grants and bounties successfully completed, with links to the final deliverables for community verification.
Qualitative Metrics
These metrics will provide insight into the quality of the contributor experience and the strategic impact of the funded projects.
- Contributor Satisfaction: An annual, anonymous survey will be sent to all individuals who received funding through the Gateway to gauge their satisfaction with the clarity, fairness, and efficiency of the onboarding and funding process.
- Target: Achieve a contributor satisfaction score of over 80%. [tbd]
- Strategic Alignment & Impact: Regular feedback will be solicited from the Working Group stewards and the broader delegate community on the quality and strategic relevance of the projects funded through the Gateway.
- Transparency and Fairness: Ongoing analysis of forum discussions, Discord sentiment, and delegate feedback to assess the community’s perception of the program’s fairness, transparency, and overall effectiveness in achieving its mission.
The Professionalization of DAO Contributions
In the early days of DAOs, participation was often driven by passion and ideology, with compensation being informal or an afterthought. As projects across the ecosystems have matured and treasuries have grown into the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, they have recognized the necessity of implementing more structured, predictable, and professional funding mechanisms to attract and retain top-tier talent.
High-quality developers, researchers, and community builders, while often ideologically aligned, also operate in a competitive market for their skills. They require clarity, predictability, and fair compensation for their work. An ecosystem that relies solely on informal networks and retroactive rewards will inevitably lose out to those that offer professional, transparent, and proactive funding opportunities.
By lacking a formal, forward-looking grants program for new contributors, the ENS DAO is currently at a competitive disadvantage in this “market for talent.” Adopting the Contributor Gateway is therefore a crucial step for ENS to remain competitive and professional. It signals to the broader Web3 community that ENS is a serious and sustainable ecosystem to build in, one that values and properly compensates the contributions of its community members.
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